Democratic wealth and building up the institutions of the left

Co-ops, mutuals, movement building and how to avoid Pasokification of Britain's left - James Doran attended a discussion hosted by Policy Network about the instutitutions of the left and what we can learn from the USA.

West Harris - owned by one of the UK's biggest community land trusts

Last week, at the headquarters of the
Policy Network, an interactive round-table debate was held in
partnership with the journal Renewal – part of a series of debates
on the problems facing social democratic politics. The subject was
“Building-up new institutional power bases in the age of austerity:
Lessons from the United States” and the event was chaired by Roger
Liddle, a Labour peer and frontbench spokesman on Europe and
Business, Innovation and Skills, who is the chair of Policy Network.

“Build it now!”

Joe Guinan, senior fellow at the
Democracy Collaborative at the University of Maryland, opened the
debate by sharing the experiences of US “community wealth”
initiatives – from social enterprises and community land trusts to
co-operatives and employee-owned firms. These projects, by existing
community groups and trades unions, are usually aimed at addressing
specific problems facing towns and cities, but they are challenging
the trends of de-industrialisation and urban decline by democratising
and localising capital. Many of these projects have been launched in
the wake of the economic crises which began five years ago, and in
response to the decline in revenues experienced by municipalities.

The Democracy Collaborative has
researched community wealth projects for over ten years, led by Gar
Alperovitz – whose book What Then Must We Do? is a practical
guide to the new economic movement in America. That the world's most
powerful capitalist state has a powerful movement for economic
democracy may come as a surprise. But in the course of the Great
Recession, Americans - like Europeans – have become enamoured with
alternatives which are practically, if not rhetorically, opposed to
the interests of the ruling class.

Joe related these experiences to the
situation faced by European social democratic parties. Bereft of an
independent economic programme, their offer to electorates is slower,
softer austerity cuts. I think this is effectively to declare “be
killed by us or murdered by conservatives”.

The adoption of policies which are
aimed at ameliorating the impact of austerity through institutional
creation is not risk-free, however: attacks can be launched from
existing institutional power bases. Consider the recent policy
announcement by the leader of the Labour Party, Ed Miliband, to
freeze energy prices – and the hysterical response from the Big Six
energy companies; consider two the Labour leader's position on media
reform, and the Daily Mail's smear job on his father, the late Ralph
Miliband.

Co-operation or co-optation?

Karin Christiansen, the general
secretary of the Co-operative Party, gave a considered response, rich
in technical detail. The Co-operative Party is uniquely placed to
share the lessons of US community wealth-building, having a record
number of parliamentary representatives and a network of
“co-operative councils” – Labour authorities committed to
putting democratic principles into public service reform.

How much of this is offensive rather
than a defensive response to austerity remains to be seen. The risk
remains that the agenda of public service reform (code for cuts,
privatisations, and job losses) gets through, and the agenda of
private sector reform gets lost. Though I've been a member of the
Co-operative Party for a number of years, I've always had the
suspicion that its success in recent years has been because it is as
means by which would-be candidates with weak or no union links can
get on in selection processes.

Certainly, in my experience of the
Labour leadership hustings events in 2010, the most prominent
Co-operative Party MP, Ed Balls, did not put cooperativism at the
heart of economic strategy. Indeed, he was recently asked if he was a
socialist, to which he proudly admitted, only to state that this
should not be seen as advocacy of an economic programme. Managing
capitalism it is, then. Which will be obvious from the ditching of
“too far, too fast” line and the quiet acceptance of Tory
borrowing plans for the next parliament – the kind of move that
might have been palatable for New Labour in the context of a global
economic boom after 1997, but could mean secessions from One Nation
Labour by union affiliates crushed under the weight of cuts.

Co-operation as code

The problem which exists is one of
understanding political philosophies and the different uses to which
the same words are put. So, for example, the Labour leader's repeated
references to a “responsible capitalism” or a “capitalism which
works for working people” – clearly this must be a reference to a
markets rather than capital itself, as you cannot put capital to work
for people who do not own it.

Will Davies, assistant professor at the
Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, Warwick, raised an
interesting question about the absence of a legal equivalent to
social entrepreneurship. Why is there not a category of “social
lawyers”? Will made it clear that this was not yet a developed area
of his thought – at present, it is a blogpost,
one which I urge you to read.

The mention of legal forms influencing
outcomes reminded me of comments by Dave Boyle at a recent conference
held by Ethical Consumer magazine, Co-operative Alternatives to
Capitalism. Co-operatives UK, the trade association, is working on a
form of co-operative which could be administered online. Boyle's
lively and amusing speech is available online here,
and I'd urge you to listen to it, as it gives a critical reflection
on the progress of the British co-operative movement with
constructive proposals for reform through the use of “liquid
democracy” software.

Money for nothing

Stuart White, director of the Public
Policy Unit and lecturer in politics at Jesus College, Oxford,
responded with thoughts on the intellectual underpinnings of citizen
ownership: tracing the history of asset-based welfare policies in
British politics, from the economist James Meade's exposition of
“property-owning democracy” in his 1964 book, Efficiency,
Equality and the Ownership of Property, to the high-points of
adoption by the Social Democratic Party and Liberal Democrats.

In the course of the 1990s, the idea of
a “citizens' trust” which would accumulate shares in firms and
pay a “social dividend” to each citizen remained a commitment of
the Liberal Democrats, and there was the implementation of the modest
child trust fund policy by the New Labour government (subsequently
abolished by the Conservative / Liberal Democrat coalition) which
endowed each newborn child with a stake to which parents could add.

Roger Liddle mentioned that Meade, like
himself, was involved in the split from Labour – the Social
Democratic Party. I think it's worth noting that the demands for
property-owning democracy (not to be confused with Thatcher's term
for privatisation) had force not because they came from
academics alone, but because the 1970s was the high-point of
organised labour mobilisation in the UK, with a strong shop-stewards
movement of lay trade unionists, eager for greater economic democracy
in the face of a prolonged investment strike by capital.

The SDP was a response to this, but
very much a reaction against organised labour and the new generation
of activist workers – by parliamentarians, councillors, and
would-be politicians, whose backgrounds were in the management of a
capitalist economy, rather than the generation of its wealth through
their labour. Indeed, the breaking point for the Social Democrats in
the Labour Party was the adoption of constitutional reforms which
gave a say to local party members over the selection of parliamentary
candidates – this proved to be the only effective means to ensure
that manifesto commitments (for greater public ownership, industrial
democracy, and against European integration on a capitalist basis)
would actually be implemented by Labour governments.

Moderately stupid

The elites won out in the end: New
Labour was the SDP reheated, after all. When a split Labour party
lost elections, moderates could argue with the collapse of the only
existing alternatives to capitalism that democratic socialism was
good in principle but should not be preached or practiced.

What of those who hanker after a return
to the settlement between organised labour and organised capital
which allowed a social democratic government to tax and spend during
the late 1990s and 2000s? I have a term for them: #BlairiteFuckwits.
People ask me why I would use this rather fruity phrase – is it
not, well, a bit rude? No, because the people I'm referring to are
both Blairites and fuckwits. It's not without careful consideration.
Those who want to resurrect New Labour are commonly known as
Blairites, and people who think that the model of winning elections
and governing which worked in a boom will work in a slump are surely
guilty of serious fuckwittery. They appear oblivious to the threat of
Pasokification
– the trend for social democratic parties across Western Europe to
be rejected by voters after implementing austerity cuts, resulting in
the return to power of conservatives and the strengthening of radical
anti-capitalist parties.

Even a return to the policies pursued
by New Labour would require the re-mobilisation of organised labour.
And that would mean embracing the kinds of industrial militancy which
may not be necessary in polite society but which mean the difference
between poverty pay and a living wage. Stuart
White and Martin O'Neil have pointed to the New Labour that could
have been, but this lacks agency – as I have said, property-owning
democracy was only seriously discussed within mainstream
political parties because people outside of elite circles knew, to
speak plainly again, shit was fucked up and were fucking shit up in
response.

For all the talk of economic democracy,
there was no mention of the dictators at the Policy Network – the
fat cats (shareholders) and top dogs (executives) – who will oppose
change just as fiercely as they have in the past. Nor was there
consideration of who will provide the resources for the formation of
what Martin Wood has referred to as “collective agency”, the
ability of individuals to engage in critical reflection of their
situation and take action to alter their shared circumstances.

Burning down the house

In his article “Burn
up not out”, Aaron Peters argues that we can learn from the
shift in the US from the socially conservative positioning of Bush to
the cultural pluralism of Obama. This is obviously not about
imitating the US Democratic Party, but emulating the work which
nurtured a social movement base. The recommendations Aaron makes for
the UK labour and social movements are:

1) Fund-raising: “an organisation,
where community, media and mutual aid groups can raise money. If done
effectively there is no reason why this would not take a great deal
of charitable donations currently being advanced to frequently
ineffective and sclerotic social movement organisations and third
sector actors. For the anti-capitalist and union movements to not
have a disintermediated funding network limits our ability to have
sufficiently well-resourced organisations. This would be a relatively
low-cost effort which would require several full time staff at most.
If done effectively it would change the landscape for potentially
thousands of organisations seeking to fight austerity,
neo-liberalism, capitalism and authoritarianism(s).” Example:
ActBlue.

2) Leadership and Building Skills:
“where large numbers of people come together to discuss and learn
about community organising and how to use specific tools”. Example:
New Organizing
Institute. I'd argue that, given sufficient pressure from below
and resources from above, something like the NOI could be established
out of the work the People's
Assemblies are doing in bringing people together from trades
unions and community groups. Some trade unions realise that the
organising approach is the only sustainable path – for example,
Unite's
community membership scheme.

3) Social Events: “where people could
get to know one another offline, where ‘newbies’ could discuss
politics with others outside of formally hierarchical settings, where
people could have fun, and where thin ties that characterise social
networks built up over digital fora become thick ones. [...] Again,
given the low costs of creating this kind of online space – which
might only require 2-3 full and part-time staff – such an
organisation commends itself.” Example: Drinking
Liberally.

4)
Independent Communication Channels: “organisations that seek to
combine the best of the old and the new; creating quality, user-led
content that receives high levels of feedback and co-creation from
viewers/ listeners [...] Media hubs that created television, written
and audio content and that could, during heightened episodes of
contention, provide information and feedback to movements as well as
extending their grievances and solutions to the wider population,
would be of major practical benefit.” Examples include Project
Syndicate and The
Stream.

The
efforts would provide the ability for what Andre Gorz termed
“non-reformist reforms” to be articulated as long-term goals. In
his book Envisioning
Real Utopias,
Erik Olin Wright puts forward four examples of activity which go
beyond electoral and trade union campaigning: experiments in
participatory budgeting in local government, cultivation of the
digital
commons, construction of federated worker co-operatives, and
agitation for the right to an unconditional basic income.

Grassroots out of crisis

Joe's talk on the US experiences of
building community wealth through a variety of organisational models
underlined the importance of social movement unionism – organised
labour working with organised communities to effect change. Can we
imagine Unite working with the Mondragon Corporation (or even the
Co-operative Group) to establish a wave of “union co-ops” in the
UK in the same way as the United Steelworkers' union in the US and
Canada?

Given the traditional responses to
crises of the capitalists' system (working through their states,
striking against their institutions) may not be sufficient, I think
the People's Assembly movement – albeit focused on protesting
austerity – could be a place for the debates and projects initiated
by Occupy, and before that the alter-globalisation movement, to
develop.

I
felt it was worthwhile repeating something I have said elsewhere: the
long-term future for the trades union movement lies not in the “new
realism” of the 1980s and 1990s, in which union leaders pursued a
policy of managed decline through a shift to a service model, but in
the organising model of social
movement trades unionism.

Social democracy, if it has a future, will have to go back to its
roots as a highly contentious movement.

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